Mississippi Books and Writers

1996

Note:Prices listed below reflect the publisher's suggested list price. They are subject to change without notice.

Mississippi
Challenge

Juvenile Nonfiction by Mildred Pitts Walter

Aladdin ($6.95, ISBN: 0689803079)

Publication date: January 1996 (Reprint Edition)

Description:

Writing with passion and control, Mildred Pitts
Walter presents the history of African Americans in Mississippi in a major
work of nonfiction. Part One deals with slavery through the Civil War and
the Reconstruction period. Part Two brings readers to the 1960s. Fully documented,
this is history we must understand, brought to life by a rare talent. Photos.
Coretta Scott King Honor Book.

Tumult and Silence at Second Creek:
An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy

A different sort of back-to-the-land storyas
inspiring as Living the Good Life and as entertaining as All Creatures
Great and Smallthis book, the adventures of two unlikely heroes
who spent 25 years restoring the least worst land in Mississippi, will enthrall
anyone who has ever dreamed of owning a place in the country.

Mississippi

Juvenile Nonfiction by Kathleen Thompson

Portrait of America Series

Raintree/Steck Vaughn ($22.83, ISBN: 0811473449)

Publication date: February 1996 (Revised Edition)

Mississippi:
An American Journey

Nonfiction by Anthony Walton

Knopf ($24.00, ISBN: 0679446001)

Publication date: February 1996

Description:

Summoning the full expanse of its rich and tragic
historyfrom the subjugation of the Natchez empire to the Civil War,
from the Ku Klux Klan to Civil Rightsand a huge roster of martyrs, bigots,
writers, bluesmen, planters, and sharecroppers, black and white alike, Walton
reveals both the Mississippi that was and the complex racial realities of
the present day.

The fractured lives of three generations of a Southern
family unfold in this lyrical and piercing debut novel. As a young man, Harrison
Durrance comes into his own during World War II, but when the war ends, he
loses his bearings. His notions of the world begins to fail him and he, in
turn, begins to fail himself and the people he claims to love.

A raging fire in a national park seems an unlikely
setting for a murder, but thats exactly the circumstances that crime-fighting
park ranger and medic Anna Pigeon confronts in this mystery thriller. A suspicious
fire breaks loose in Northern Californias Lassen Volcanic Park and Pigeon
assists in battling the blaze and treating the wounds of other fire fighters.
As if thats not enough, Pigeon finds herself without food and water trapped
with a group of fire fighters, one of whom is a murderer. She tries to figure
out who the culprit is before he, or the weather, strikes again.

Mississippi Treasure Hunt

Fiction by Taffy Cannon

Juniper ($4.50, ISBN: 0449704505)

Publication date: March 1996

Description:

Vangie Bradley expects a lame vacation when she
and her brother fly from California to Minnesota to spend the summer with
their dad. But then they find a secret letter hidden in an old desk that contains
clues that may lead to a fortune! But who wants to live in a world without
miracles? The only catch is the keya 100-year-old test of knowledge.
Original.

White Socks Only

Juvenile Fiction by Evelyn Coleman, Illustrated
by Tyron Geter

Albert Whitman & Co. ($15.95, ISBN: 0807589551)

Publication date: March 1996

Description:

There was a “Whites Only” sign on a
nearby fountain, but that didnt bother this childafter all, she
was wearing her clean white socks. Evelyn Coleman combines memories of her Southern
childhood with magical realism to create a story that resonates with power.
Tyrone Geters full-color illustrations convey great feeling and emotion.

Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder
of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De LA Beckwith, and the Haunting of the
New South

Nonfiction by Maryanne Vollers

Little, Brown & Co. ($13.95, ISBN: 0316914711)

Publication date: April 1996

Description:

In February 1994, a Mississippi jury finally convicted
white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith of the 1963 murder of civil rights
leader Medgar Evers. Now, in Ghosts of Mississippi, Maryanne Vollers
brings to light a host of new facts and insights about the case, weaving a
compelling narrative that traces the journey from old South to new.

Frequently portrayed as beer-guzzling, duck-shooting,
wife-beating bigots, Southern white men dont catch much of a break these
days. Yet in Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson manages to portray
this much-maligned beast with empathy and insight. Equally important, he also
manages to make clear the importance of their dogsan importance that can
cut both ways. In the title story, for example, a man has an affair that's consummated
in the foam-rubber pole-vault pad at the local playing field. When his wife
finds out, she gets even the surest way she knows how, by having his dog put
to sleep.

Watson, in precise and beautiful prose, writes
about people and dogsdogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting
victims of human passionsand people responding to dogs as missing parts
or reflections of themselves. In each of these stories he captures the animal
crannies of the human personalityyearning for freedom and mourning the
loss of something wild.

Talking About William Faulkner:
Interviews with Jimmy Faulkner and Others

“Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Nonfiction by David M. Oshinsky

Free Press ($25.00, ISBN: 0684822989)

Publication date: April 1996

Brief Review:

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History,
Columbia University: A book of both scholarly distinction and impassioned
social commentary, Worse Than Slavery takes us on a fascinating journey
into the world of criminal justice in the era of racial segregation. The system
of convict leasing and prison farms, Oshinsky remind us, was a home-grown gulag
sanctioned by public authorities, social scientists, and self-proclaimed advocates
of racial purity. At a time when imprisonment has become the favored solution
to all sorts of social problems, Americans can ignore Oshinskys history
of Parchman Farm only at their peril.

Edward L. Ayers: Oshinskys book goes
to the heart of America's struggles with race, crime, and punishment. By showing
how Parchman Penitentiary changed and did not change from the Old South until
today, Oshinsky provides an unprecedented depth and perspective on these problems.
He tells his story sparely and eloquently, without sentimentality, in the words
of the people swept up in the sadness and terror of Parchman.

Spencer, a native-born Mississippian, offers six
fascinating tales in which Southerners surrender to the mesmerizing spell
of Italy. Here in one volume are tales with plots so alluring and enigmatic
that Boccaccio would have been charmed by their delightful ironies and their
sinister contrasts of dark and light.

John Perkins was raised a victim of oppression
and racial prejudice in rural Mississippi. But he chose to exercise forgiveness
and reconciliation toward those who oppressed him. Today, he is the head of
Voice of Calvary ministries. John Perkins is a model of courage and persistence
in the face of adversity, and preteen readers will be inspired by his story.

Throughout her writing career Eudora Weltys
camera was a close companion. She is among the very few authors who are acclaimed
for their work in both literature and photography. The 100 duotone pictures
in this volume are selections from the many she took during the Great Depression
as she traveled in her home state of Mississippi while she was working for the
WPA.

This collection of short fiction by the award-winning
author of Wolf Whistle is taken from his two previous anthologies Welcome
to the Arrow-Catcher Fair and The All-Girl Football Team. All 15
tales demonstrate how Nordan, from the very start of his career, has reached
into his prodigiously rich stores of imagination and memory to create the
people and events of his mythical town of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi.

Ever wonder what happens in the jury room, where
lawyers aren't heard and the judge is not welcome? Who controls a jury when
the door is locked and the deliberations begin? In John Grisham's newest novel,
readers will find out the answers to these questions. For, every jury has
a leaderand the verdict belongs to that person.

Yellow Dogs, Hushpuppies, and Bluetick Hounds: The Official Encyclopedia of
Southern Culture Quiz Book

Entertaining, fun, and educational, this quiz book
covers every aspect of southern culture from alligators to melungeons to zydeco.
More than 800 questionsmost drawn from the Encyclopedia of Southern
Culturecover literature, music, entertainment, history, politics,
the law, sports, science, medicine, business, industry, and religion.

A team of scientists explore an uncharted region
of the Amazon, seeking exotic plants that may yield cures for the diseases afflicting
humanity. But their mission goes horribly wrong when the party is attacked by
the areas mysterious natives, and when they learn too late that they've
landed in the cauldron of a deadly, unknown virus.

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611
men of the United States 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of the Little Bighorn
in the Montana Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle. The
lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history:
Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer.
Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both became leaders in their
societies at very early ages; both were stripped of power, in disgrace, and
worked to earn back the respect of their people. And to both of them, the
unspoiled grandeur of the Great Plains of North America was an irresistible
challenge. Their parallel lives would pave the way, in a manner unknown to
either, for an inevitable clash between two nations fighting for possession
of the open prairie.

“Movingly told and well written ...
a fine contribution, one that will be read with pleasure and admiration by general
reader, student and scholar alike. Ambrose has breathed new life into the familiar
facts.”

Library Journal

“An epic and accurate retelling of one of
our countrys most tragic periods.”

A shocking discovery of a personal nature propels
mystery critic/sleuth Stokes Moran in this third book in the series. When a
man who is his mirror image appears at his home, Kyle Malachi (a.k.a. Stokes
Moran) is suspicious and resentful. Later his “twin” turns up murdered,
and Kyle decides to masquerade as the dead man in hopes of trapping the killer.

Haines (Summer of the Redeemers, 1994)
ladles on the pluck and grit as she limns the life of Mattie, a strong woman
who comes to live in a preternaturally mean Mississippi town, where she faces
down the local bigots, survives a severe spousal beating, and exacts a deadly
revenge. Jexville in 1926, as 16-year-old mail-order bride Mattie soon learns,
is a town where intolerance is as unavoidable as the humidity. The people
are devout, suspicious, narrow-minded.

Theyre also hypocrites: The men drink bootleg
liquor; the women are malicious; and both sexes support a husband's right
to beat his wife. To be in any way different is to invite trouble, which is
exactly what Matties new friend JoHanna McVay, married to handsome Will,
a purveyor of moonshine to political bigwigs, often does.

Mattie, newly married to Elikah, the towns
barber, meets JoHanna and her nine-year-old daughter, Duncan, at a childrens
party. Duncan, struck by lightning, soon acquires the ability to foretell
the future. Then Mattie is violently beaten and sexually humiliated by Elikah.
Pregnant, she decides not to have his child. JoHanna, accordingly, arranges
for an illegal abortion and tries to convince Mattie to leave Elikah, but
JoHanna soon has troubles of her own: Duncans accurate predictions of
death and destruction convince the locals that shes a child of Satan.

Harris, author of the Aurora Teagarden series,
now introduces Lily Bard, resident of Shakespeare, Arkansas, a woman fiercely
protective of her privacy, determined to succeed as a one-woman cleaning agency,
and just as fiercely determined to excel in karate.

When the unpopular and very nosy owner of the apartment
building next door is murdered and the body dumped in the local park, Lily reports
the body to the policeanonymously. The local police chief, however, is
nobodys fool and quickly discovers Lilys involvement and her own
past, which makes her a possible suspect. Given the situation and, since she
cleans for many of the other possible suspects, some opportunities, Lily decides
that the only way to clear her name is to find the real killer.

Harris has created an intriguing new character
in this solidly plotted story. Expect more from crime fictions first
cleaning-lady series. Stuart Miller

Grover Bramlett, beloved Mississippi sheriff, is
back in his third dazzling mystery. On a rain-swept night in Sheffield, Sheriff
Bramlett steps into the middle of a decades-old clandestine love affair when
a middle-aged furniture salesman is gunned down in the parking lot of his
apartment building. The sheriff soon finds that another unsolved murder could
be related to this crime.

The
Last Family

A Novel by John Ramsey Miller

Bantam Doubleday ($21.95, ISBN: 0553102133)

Publication date: August 1996

Description:

Devastated by guilt after two young agents die while saving his life during a drug raid, DEA agent Paul Masterson fled to the mountains of Montana and secluded himself in a prison of silence. Now his family, whom Paul has not seen in six years, is the final target of a coldly brilliant killer seeking revenge. And to stop this madman, Paul must rediscover his fierce survival instincts.

Its that story again: unsophisticated adolescent
boy, spunky, curious princess, large landscape for them to tour, troublesome
deities, a magic sword. J. Gregory Keyes’s knowledge of epics, myths,
and human cultures is a solid foundation for his series, making it far better
than the average product: a story that might have happened sometime between
the Ice Ages when numinous deities still dwelled in every tree, rock, and pool.
The detailed social structures and customs feel more authentic, though they’re
also familiarthe urban monotheists, the shamanistic horseback nomads,
and so on. The writing is workmanlike, but the anthropological soundness and
echoes of ancient stories give life and dimension to the old archetypes.

Cassies mother told her, Times are hard, honey. With jobs scarce, Cassies daddy had gone to Louisiana to lay track for the railroads to get money to feed his children back in Mississippi. That was when the trouble started. Mr. Andersen dared cheat Big Ma by forcing her to sell the giant old trees in the forest surrounding the house. The trees were Cassies friends, singing her a special song that others insisted was only the wind. What would happen now with daddy away?

Larry Brown is the master of the raw and the sparse
and of bringing Mississippi to the world in a language that is as stripped down
and bare as Faulkners
is dense. Brown is at his best when he writes of the tensions between one screwed-up
man and another, in this case a father and son. One has just been let out of
prison, and he shouldn’t have been. The other is drunk and disabled, and intends
on staying that way. To make things worse there is a conflict with the sheriff,
who is good and righteous, but who tried to put the moves on the parolee’s woman
while he was in prison. To tell more would be to violate Brown’s mastery of
dialogue and of that which goes unspoken in this sly story of father, son and
misery.

Hillcountry Warriors: The Civil
War South Seldom Seen

Fiction by Johnny Neal Smith

Sunstone Press ($24.95, ISBN: 0865342474)

Publication date: September 1996

Confessions of an Accidental Businessman:
It Takes a Lifetime to Find Wisdom

This business autobiography of a corporate executive
relates the management and leadership lessons which Autry, a Fortune 500 executive,
has learned on his way to the top. According to Autry, knowing what to do
is only part of becoming a leader; the only part is knowing how to be.

Now in its 11th year, this book has become the
annual anthology to watch. The stories featured here continue the tradition
of excellence, presenting the work of exciting newcomers alongside that of
the established masters. This year’s volume includes “Rose of
Lebanon,” a new story by the colossus of Southern literatureWilliam
Faulkner.

Midwest Book Review:

The jewel in the crown of this superlative “1996
Year’s Best” short story anthology is a new story never before published
in book form by William Faulkner. The work of the other contributors measures
up to the best that Faulkner had to offer in his prime. Moira Crone, Jill
McCorkle, Marcia Guthridge, Robert Olen Butler, Susan Perabo, Annette Sanford,
Lee Smith, Kathy Flann, Robert Morgan, Tim Gautreaux, David Gilbert, Tom Paine,
J. D. Dolan, and Ellen Douglas all have one thing in common with the legendary
Faulknerthey tell a story so well that the reader is caught up in the
lives and events and characters from the first word to the last. New Stories
from the South: The Year’s Best, 1996 is a “must” for all
Faulkner fans, and will introduce readers to a galaxy of new names whose work
is to be read just as enthusiastically!

Roads from the Bottom: A Survival
Journal for America’s Black Community

Nonfiction by
C.K. Chiplin and
Gwen McKee

Quail Ridge Press ($15.95, ISBN: 0937552739)

Publication date: September 1996

Terror in the Night: The Klan’s
Campaign Against the Jews

Nonfiction by Jack Nelson

University Press of Mississippi ($16.00, ISBN: 0878059075)

Publication date: September 1996 (Reprint Edition)

Uproar
at Dancing Rabbit Creek: The Battle over Race, Class and the Environment in
the New South

Nonfiction by Colin Crawford

Addison-Wesley Publishing Company ($24.00, ISBN:
020162723X)

Publication date: September 1996

Brief Review:

The creek of the title is in poor, mostly black
Noxubee County, Mississippi, and the uproar was over the possible siting there
of a chemical waste dump. Environmental lawyer Colin Crawford tells this cautionary,
near-tragic tale from the perspective of the leaders of each faction: Martha
Blackwell, the wealthy white woman who leads the opposition to the dump; Ike
Brown, the political boss of the black community, who favors it; and Ed Netherland,
the company man searching for a site for the dump and trying to sell it to
the citizens of Noxubee. The clash of race, environmentalist fear, greed,
and class makes for a fascinating storyand one without a happy ending.

The rarely seen and startlingly vital black-and-white
photographs in this volume capture the fortitude and pride of the clear-eyed
women of the frontier, women who had to practice all the tender arts of nurturing
a family under the most rugged of circumstances. Peavy and Smith cut through
all the myths of frontier life in their frank and engaging commentary, getting
down to the cold, gritty facts under such headings as Keeping Spirits
Up, Night Fears, Warding Off Insects and Animals,
and Little Ones Lost. This litany alludes to the loneliness and
isolation of pioneer existence, where every act, from securing clean drinking
water to making clothes, required long, hard labor, and where pregnancy, childbirth,
and motherhood often involved as much tragedy as joy. Little-discussed issues,
such as marriages between Anglo men and Indian and Hispanic women, are examined,
as are the lives of women who found employment outside the homestead as teachers,
physicians, businesswomen, journalists, and even prostitutes. A book as fresh
and inspiring as a bright, breezy day on the plains. Donna Seaman

The Acolyte

A Novel by David Compton

Simon & Schuster ($23.00, ISBN: 0684804301)

Publication date: October 1996

Description:

“There are stars in the making and David
Compton is one,” promises The Wall Street Journal. With foreign
rights widely sold and a major movie deal signed, the fanfare continues to build
for this thriller about an innocent man trapped by his own zeal and ambition
in a deadly CIA conspiracy.

This evocative book is among the first to tell
the story of the civil rights movement through the inspiring photographs that
recorded, promoted, and protected it. With a striking selection of images
and a lively, cogent text, Steven Kasher captures the danger, drama, and bravery
of the civil rights movement. 150 duotone illustrations.

The short stories in the first half of this collection
feature Nora Jane Whittington, one of Ellen Gilchrist's familiar characters,
and through her and her family and friends Gilchrist explores the complex
balancing of relationships. The stories in the second half have many varying
points of viewincluding a non-human one, that of a bear cub. These thoughtful
tales, alive with vivid description, revolve around the tensions between the
mind and the body, and between what is desired and what is achievable.

Distant Friends and Intimate Strangers

Stories by Charles East

University of Illinois Press ($14.95, ISBN: 0252065794)

Publication date: October 1996

Brief Review:

Charles East is unafraid to tackle locales that
already have long and rich literary traditions; many of his stories are set
in places like Memphis and New Orleans, which figure heavily in classic Southern
fiction. Now its the 1990s, however, and the distinctiveness of many Southern
places has rubbed off. East writes of people regretting their past and groping
their way toward a suitable, if not actually happy, future. Usually, marriage
and romance are the paths on which these characters grope, such as the cop musing
over his ex-wifes infidelities while he flies over New Orleans in a helicopter.

Barry Hannah writes like a barroom raconteur talks:
unevenly, wildly, with a superabundance of vivid images, sometimes improbable
plotlines, and a wicked, comic appreciation for human failings. In this collection
he takes on middle-aged heroes whove lived through bad marriages and are
now suffering the ravages of alcohol and sexual cravingin other words,
men not unlike Hannah himself. Hannah's turns of phrase can shoot off the page
to stab the reader in the heart; even the weakest stories in this book contain
a great line or two.

Home Fires Burning

Fiction by Penelope J. Stokes

Faith on the Home Front Series, Vol. 1

Tynedale House Publishers ($8.99, ISBN: 0842308512)

Publication date: October 1996

Mississippi

Juvenile Nonfiction by Kathleen Thompson

Portrait of America Series

Raintree/Steck Vaughn ($5.95, ISBN: 0811474496)

Publication date: October 1996

Silver
Rights

Nonfiction by Constance Curry; Introduction
by Marian Wright Edelman

Harcourt Brace ($13.00, ISBN: 0156004798)

Publication date: October 1996

Description:

Silver Rights is the true story of clear-eyed
determination, down-home grit, and sweet triumph. It is the tale of the Carter
familys brave decision to send their children to an all-white school in
Mississippi in 1965. Constance Curry was a field representative for the American
Friends Service Committee in Mississippi, helping to aid desegregation efforts.

Learning that the new home she is to share with
her future husband was owned by a family that disappeared six years earlier,
Roe Teagarden becomes suspicious about a pair of tenants living in the garage
apartment.

A freelance journalist who covered the infamous
trial shows how the evidence from the scene of the crime was used and misused
in court and tells why neither side mentioned the dramatic ride in the white
Bronco.

The brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar
Evers offers a landmark addition to the history of the civil rights era and
its searing aftermath. Featuring candid profiles of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johsnon, George Wallace, and others
whom Evers knew, this chronicle recreates the raw emotions of those times
and conveys all of the hatred, humiliation, rage, and hope of a people rising
against injustice to demand equality of photos.

Publication date: November 1996 (Paperback
reprint of hardcover
edition published by Simon & Schuster in 1995)

Description:

In the years most important and compelling
biography, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents a moving, original portrait
of a man who grew into greatness as president. Drawing on Lincolns personal
papers and on the vast, unexplored records of his legal practice, Donald recreates
Lincolns world with immediacy and rich detail.

Rick Bass, a prolific writer of considerable merit,
has crafted an elegant plea to save the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley in northwestern
Montana. Bass argues that the Yaak deserves to be saved, both for its beauty
and for its role in a biological system that stretches through much of North
America. To enamor readers with the Yaak he describes it with reverence, and
in doing so makes us care. “We are all complicit,” he says.

Soon after happily married Aurora Teagarden discovers
her husbands shady past, the dead body of Detective Sergeant Jack Burns
is unceremoniously dumped in her backyard by a small plane and she cannot
help but wonder if it is related to Martins secrets.

Introduced by Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and
former Golden Gloves boxer Richard Ford, The Fights is as rich in beauty
as it is provocative in subjecta meditation on the soul of the boxer,
and on the body as an instrument of violence and an inspiration for art. 50
photos.

Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought
in the Old South

Biography by Douglas
Ambrose

Louisiana State University Press ($45.00, ISBN: 0807120804)

Publication date: December 1996

Hooray
for Mississippi: A Childs Journey into the History and Culture of Mississippi

Richards chronicles his life as a young, black boy, growing up in a large farm in rural Mississippi, where he and his family are subjected to the brutal injustice of Jim Crow. Despite the impoverished circumstances and harsh prejudices that dominated the life of Roosevelt and his family, his story is lovingly recounted.